Calcutta: A visit to the Victoria Memorial Hall is just a click away with the launch of online ticket service on Sunday.

Long queues will be a thing of the past with the authorities having tied up with BookMyShow to sell tickets. The facility was launched by Union culture secretary Raghvendra Singh.

The ticketing platform for Victoria Memorial will be accessible both directly on the BookMyShow website and through a hyperlink on the monument's website: http://www.victoriamemorial-cal.org/home/content/en.

Those buying tickets can use debit and credit cards (Visa and Mastercard) as well as Internet banking for payment. International users will need to have a PayPal account to buy tickets online.

Smartphone users will receive an email with a QR code that will need to be scanned at the gates for paperless validation.

"Visitors can also bring a printout of the ticket with the QR code," said Jayanta Sengupta, the secretary and curator of Victoria Memorial Hall.

Two self-service ticket vending machines were also inaugurated on Sunday. The machines have been placed near the south gate at the foot of the AJC Bose Road flyover and another near the main north gate.

The marble monument is India's most visited museum with an average annual footfall of 35 lakh. Nearly 42,000 people visited the monument on the first day of the New Year alone.

From January 15, the internal security and surveillance of the museum will be handled by the Central Industrial Security Force. Police will be responsible for the peripheral security.